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Overthinking It: Parsing the PECOTAs

The PECOTA projections are here, which means that many of you will spend the day exploring the weighted-means spreadsheet and the Depth Charts in search of surprises and confirmations that it’s okay to crush on the players whose performance you’ve been awaiting all winter. That’s exactly what we do when PECOTA’s keepers deliver the first file to the staff; we just have a head start.

We’ll be offering plenty of PECOTA-related content between now and Opening Day, but today, a quick tour is in order. Here’s a look at a few of the most fascinating projections I’ve seen so far, followed by a look at the players projected to improve or decline most dramatically relative to 2013, the closest comparables for recently retired players, and a summary of the weakest projected positions on 2014 contenders.

These are a few of my favorite projections:

Billy Hamilton, Reds
The most common PECOTA complaint among fans who aren’t familiar with the way projections work is that the totals are too conservative. The best player is projected to be worth 6.8 WARP, the highest forecasted home run total is 36, and so on. We’re reasonably certain that the field will top those marks, but we wouldn’t project any particular player to do it; the one who does often has a little luck on his side, or some other factor that helps him outperform his true talent. And so the projected league leaders for the upcoming year almost always have lower rates and totals than the leaders in the previous season.

Billy Hamilton’s projection doesn’t play by those rules, which is why it makes me so happy. Hamilton is projected for 10.8 BRR. Last season’s projected leader (Coco Crisp) had a 7.0 in the spreadsheet, and last season’s actual leader (Matt Carpenter) finished with 8.4. It’s the same, obviously with steals: Hamilton projects to have 73 stolen bases, 21 more than last year’s leader. And PECOTA thinks he can do that despite a .299 OBP, which means he’ll A-B-G: Always Be Going.

PECOTA also likes Hamilton in the field, projecting him for 14 FRAA and a total of 2.9 WARP (Shin-Soo Choo’s projected WARP: 3.3). Since 1950, there have been only 24 player-seasons with a WARP of at least 2.9 and a TAv under .240. We’ve seen only two since 2000: Willy Taveras in 2006 and Jason Kendall in 2008 (Taveras’ season is a much closer match). Hamilton is on the verge of being one of the best things about baseball.

Joey Gallo, Rangers
Joey Gallo’s player comment in Baseball Prospectus 2014says he “has as much raw power as anyone in professional baseball.” PECOTA agrees, making Giancarlo Stanton his top comp. If you add an AB/HR column to the spreadsheet and sort it in ascending order, you’ll see Gallo at the top, slated for a dinger every 14.1 at-bats…and a strikeout every 2.6 plate appearance.

Extended over 650 plate appearances, Gallo’s .208/.276/.459 line would translate to 42 home runs (to go with only 60 singles) and 255 strikeouts, 32 more than Mark Reynolds’ all-time single-season record. PECOTA was paying attention when Jason Parkssaid “the swing-and-miss is 80-grade.”

Obviously, we don’t expect the 20-year-old Gallo, who hasn’t played above A-ball, to make the majors in 2014; his ETA on the Rangers Top 10 list is late 2015, and that’s if he doesn’t implode spectacularly. It’s quite possible that Gallo will be a bust because of the whiffing, which is why he’s only no. 95 on the Top 101 despite his Stanton-esque power tool. But man, I wish his spreadsheet season were real.

In the meantime, have some homers:

Do we have any power prospect lovers in the audience? Oh, you’re also raising your hands. Another note for you, then: Javier Baez and Miguel Sano also appear very close to the top of the AB/HR column.

Mike O’Neill, Cardinals
Here’s one for the powerless prospect fans. Last summer, I spoke to Mike O’Neill and wrote an article about him called “The Plate Discipline-Only Prospect.” I probably exaggerated the “prospect” part. O’Neill, who turns 26 next week, is a 5’9” (listed) left fielder with an incredible eye and next to no power. He’s slapped, scrapped, and walked his way to Triple-A, where he posted a .402 on-base percentage and a .321 slugging percentage in 32 games at the end of last season.

PECOTA projects O’Neill at .270/.373/.340. That’s a 1.10 on-base:slugging ratio. Only six players since the last strike have had an OBP:SLG ratio of 1.10 or higher and an OBP of at least .370 in a minimum of 500 plate appearances:

All of those players had something else going for them: Goodwin and Nixon were speedsters who played center; Henderson you’ve heard of; Castillo was a middle infielder who hit .300 with 20 steals; Weiss was a shortstop (whose complete power outage came with a team that collectively slugged .471). Willits, who was as old in 2007 as O’Neill will be this season, is the closest comp on this list (though J.B. Shuck is the closet on the spreadsheet), but even he had 27 steals. Over 500 plate appearances, O’Neill’s projection calls for four.

Willits was worth 2.4 WARP in ’07, but he made more plate appearances that year than he did the rest of his career. It seems unlikely that O’Neill will ever see as much action as Willits did, but we’ll always have his PECOTA.

Nolan Fontana, a 22-year-old shortstop in the Astros’ system makes O’Neill look like a slugger: PECOTA’s projection for him is .198/.342/.278.

Andrelton Simmons, Braves
PECOTA doesn’t expect Simmons to add to the power he showed in 2013, or have a higher TAv. It doesn’t think he’s an above-average baserunner. Our depth charts currently have him penciled in for fewer plate appearances than he had last year. And still he’s projected for 4.3 WARP. That’s the power of a really great glove. Simmons is projected for 22 FRAA. When you’re that good on defense, you only have to be adequate at the plate to be an impact player. If Simmons exceeds his offensive projection significantly (which isn’t that hard to imagine), he’ll be one of the best players in baseball.

Yuniesky Betancourt
If you sort the spreadsheet in ascending order of WARP, you have to scroll through a bunch of minor leaguers projected for the minimum 250 plate appearances before you get to an actual player. That player is Yuniesky Betancourt, who checks in at -0.5 WARP (in 332 plate appearances) with a .238/.268/.370 line. There’s a neatness to this: Betancourt was the worst-projected potential major leaguer, and now he’s not a major leaguer. Enjoy Orix, Yuni. If you find that you miss the majors, there'll still be someone who's surprisingly willing to pay you to play.

Mariano Rivera
PECOTA projects a 2.68 ERA with 39 saves, 8.1 strikeouts per nine, and 1.7 walks per nine for the Rivera age-44 season we’ll never know. “Rivera intends to dedicate himself to philanthropy and his churches since retiring from baseball,” Wikipedia says. How can he be so selfish?

This is unrelated, but life-affirming: Japhet Amador’s top comp is Walter Young. That makes me more confident in the comparables than anything else could. Another fun Astros fact: if we prorate all of Houston’s position players to 600 plate appearances, George Springer projects to have their highest WARP.

Comps for players who’ve left the league
On Monday’s podcast, Sam Miller and I discussed why we’d miss Yuni: his departure left the sabermetric community without a consensus player punchline. Might his comparables offer a substitute?

Probably not. Betancourt appears among the top three comps for only two active players, neither of whom seems perfectly positioned to take over his crown: Alcides Escobar and Freddy Galvis. Here are the active players most comparable to some notable recent retirees:

Risers and Fallers
As one would expect, most of PECOTA’s top WARP improvers are players projected to gain gobs of playing time, which makes comparisons based on rate stats more interesting. The following tables list the hitters and pitchers whose performance is projected to improve or decline the most as measured by TAv and ERA, respectively (minimum 500 PA or 150 IP in both seasons). To download a version of the 2014 PECOTA spreadsheet that includes extra tabs you can use to compare players’ 2014 projections to their 2013 stats (and adjust the playing time minimums as you see fit), click here.

I’m a believer in Davis, so this decline seems somewhat harsh, but even he’s not projected to be bad. Other than Gomez (another player I like), all of the decliners here are still projected to be well above average. They’re just in line for regression from some pretty steep peaks.

PECOTA is still carrying a torch for Lincecum, which is where it and I differ. Otherwise, I’m on board. PECOTA approves of Josh Byrnes’ trade for Kennedy and foresees a bounceback season from Sabathia and more of the 2013 second-half Haren, as well as some regression in A.J. Griffin’s home run rate.

Miller was hit harder than his ERA (or even his FIP) indicated last season, which may have had something to do with his postseason disappearance. I’m not surprised to see him here. PECOTA thinks buyers should beware of Santana, and that Locke’s second half of last season was a harbinger of more mediocrity to come.

Tigers, 3B: 0.0 WARP (Nick Castellanos, Steve Lombardozzi, Don Kelly)PECOTA is not a big believer in Nick Castellanos in 2014, projecting him to be slightly below average at the plate (.265/.307/.396; .251 TAv) and 10 runs below average in the field.

Blue Jays, 2B: 0.2 WARP (Ryan Goins, Brent Morel, Maicer Izturis)
The Blue Jays aren’t the favorites for Stephen Drew’s services, but he’d be a big upgrade for them if they could convince him to stand on the other side of the second-base bag.

Brewers, 1B: 0.2 WARP Mark Reynolds, Juan Francisco, Lyle Overbay)
Replacement level would be about a win and a half better than Brewers first basemen (read: Betancourt and Alex Gonzalez) were last season.

Braves, 3B: 0.4 WARP (Chris Johnson, Tyler Pastornicky)
We saw above that PECOTA expects Johnson to be one of the biggest decliners on offense; take away 25 points of TAv, and the system sees a bad glove and no baserunning ability.

Actually, PECOTA is pretty optimistic about all of the Giants' top four starting pitchers:
Cain: 3.0 WARP (0.8 in 2013, 2.8 in 2012, 2.1 in 2011)
Bumgarner: 2.8 WARP (2.6, 1.9, 3.2)
Lincecum: 2.0 WARP (0.8, -0.5, 0.7)
Hudson: 2.0 WARP (1.3, -0.3, 1.1)
In other words, three of the four are projected to do better than their best season in the past three years while Bumgarner is essentially projected to post his three-year average. Cain seems like a good bet to bounce back, although 3.0 seems like a half a run too high.
All that could happen--and as a Giants fan I hope it happens--but I'm not sure that it's completely justified. The Giants presumably are taking a major downgrade defensively in LF (Blanco to Morse) while Scutaro and Pagan are a year older.
At the same time, I'm a little perplexed with respect to Brandon Belt's projection: .264/.345/.431 (2.1 WARP). In comparison, Steamer projects .278/.362/.464 (3.0 WAR) and Oliver .280/.354/.472 (3.2 WAR). I'm just not seeing the basis for the 25 point drop in ISO that PECOTA projects for a 26 year-old who is a very athletic 6'5".

Oh, I like that Visual Depth Chart, thanks. No red or even pink. But, WOW, the NL West! If the projections are anything like reality that is going to be some race, and Snakes take the hindmost (OK, maybe Rox).

Perhaps this is my biggest problem with projections is that they don't really distinguish between seemingly real improvement/decline and an oddity. Especially with pitching
Look at guys like Sabathia or Haren. Do I think they will improve? Absolutely. Do I think Haren will be be a sub 3.50 ERA pitcher? Absolutely not. Will A.J. Griffin will be a top 30 pitcher? I doubt it.
At the same time it thinks Anibal Sanchez and his 12.4% SwgStk rate will regress from ace to #2. I don't see why it would project Miller,Teheran, and Iwakuma to regress from fantastic starters to slightly below average starters.
Would it be possible to utilize things like weighing things like recent SwgStk%,,F-Strike%,Velocity changes..etc. into the projection to make them more accurate?

I don't think the current PECOTA factors in sequencing of seasons (that may suggest real improvement or decline). So you get stuff like Mike Olt projected to have a OPS of .738 in the majors this year...

yes, I actually provide the same data to both Brooks and BP. We intend to use it for projections, and other things, in short order.
One possible example would be accounting for a less regressable GB rate for a guy who just added a sinker, or started throwing it more often. That would trickle thru in a variety of ways.